August 2006

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/87455845-BD62-4D4B-9F16-559AF4BCF...

Lebanon oil spill crisis

Saturday 29 July 2006, 0:43 Makka Time, 21:43 GMT

The Lebanese coastline has been badly affected

The Lebanese government has appealed for help to clean up a huge oil spill along its coastline created after Israel bombed a power plant.

Reading this morning’s Merced Sun-Star article, “Freeway work has chopped up roads,” we couldn’t help asking the obvious question: What were our leaders – local, state and federal elected officials, their staffs, the staffs of the city and county of Merced, business and financial leaders, large land owners and the newspaper – thinking?

So, we return to the elemental parental question, when the child returns injured or having damaged his family’s or someone else’s property: “What were you thinking?”

by Chico del los Pozos

I have concluded over the years that when writing about the complexities of California’s byzantine water world, it is easiest to write about water in terms of cold hard cash. A flowing, living river has aesthetic value to environmentalists and preservationists while a river of dollar bills appeals to a different set of values that even the most apathetic taxpayer can understand.

The new Silicon Valley of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, we suggest, is simply another flak attack on his weary constituents, who are slowly beginning to realize up what creek he has led them.